Walking with Ghosts

by Baker, John

  Your mother was a historian, a secret historian. Her account of the Great War is still among your papers in the bureau. You have failed to edit it for more than thirty years. The truth is, you never wanted to edit it because it was hers. You were jealous of her, as she was jealous of you. Her only achievement, as far as you are concerned, is that she was a cousin of Dylan Thomas (and your earliest memory is of being kissed by him).

  ‘I was kissed by Dylan Thomas,’ you have told almost everyone you ever met. ‘He went down on one knee and kissed me on the cheek. I remember being tickled by a day’s growth of beard, and the smell of figs on his breath. He was a relative on my mother’s side, somewhat removed, but he visited us when he was in the neighbourhood.’ You have been a snob about that.

  In truth, you don’t know if you remember it or not. You don’t know if you remember Dylan Thomas, or if what you remember is your mother’s memory. Because she told everyone the same story: ‘Dylan Thomas kissed Dora, you know. She was small at the time, but she still remembers, don’t you, Dora? His bristles and a figgy smell, typical childhood observations. He was my cousin, you know, a regular visitor whenever he was in Wales.’ You are like your mother. You have become more like your mother as you have grown older. The last ten years have been a nightmare in that respect. You would not have believed it possible. You feel like her. You turn your head when someone speaks and in a flash you recognize the gesture. It is your mother turning her head. She lives in the tone of your voice. Your characteristics, gestures, inflections of speech, they are all inherited. You are reverting to form. Everything you rejected, burned, left behind; it is all reconstituting itself. You have not escaped. You have run away, but you have not escaped.

  You laugh because you can see now what you were running from. It is life’s oldest comedy. Your mother was not so bad. She was like you. A Swansea girl, born and bred. When you laugh at her you are laughing at yourself.

  You were special. You were a special child born into a special family. A respectable family. A middle-class family. You had advantages. The house had more rooms than people. A mile away the working classes lived in black shams lit by candles. Further away still lived the miners who communicated in grunts. The miners who lived on roots, and who made Mother tug you into her skirts when they passed in the street.

  Already when Dylan Thomas published Deaths and Entrances you could read and write and converse about the world, you were more knowledgeable and wise than any miner or any miner’s son or daughter. You told all Mother’s visitors about the Sydney Harbour Bridge. ‘A triumph of engineering.’ You described the treasures of Tutankhamun. You were a precocious child. Everyone patronized you; but even the adults were a little scared. You could see it in their eyes.

  Everything in your childhood was special, but more special than anything else was your education. For your mother the highest learning was history. You spent seven years in a class with five other girls under the personal tuition of Miss Masefield (‘Not, like my namesake, a poet; though, believe me, young ladies, poetry has been for me the most edifying inspiration of my life.’) Miss Masefield hated children and loved knowledge, and her mission in life was to wed the two together. As a child you watched her grow haggard with the struggle.

  Apart from Joan, the other girls in the class were stupid. Joan was your cousin, and like yourself, an only child. You agreed to be sisters on the day an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima, and you still think of her as your sister now. Together with Joan you looked at the photographs of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth, and years later you reminded Joan that Lady Day was serving a prison sentence when the princess and her prince walked up the aisle. Lady Day had taken a cure earlier in the year, but then got herself arrested as a user in Philadelphia. She was sentenced to a-year-and-a-day at the Alderson Reformatory in West Virginia. Joan’s something big in Women’s Lib now. She became politicized late in life, about the same time you were beginning to turn to God.

  Joan made it to Oxford too, only she did not stay the course. It was different for you. You were a sticker. You clenched your teeth in the face of the humiliation, the patronage, the sheer bloodiness of a masculine preserve. There was not a day, not a single day at the University when you were allowed to think of yourself as other than a woman, a poor relation of man. Hesketh-Darwin-Jones, your tutor in the history department, was struck dumb by the swish of a skirt. He had chosen academia in preference to the military or the church to avoid the female sex; and, lo, the establishment had betrayed him. He was dumb. He never spoke a word to you in three years. He coughed and stammered and constantly rearranged the features of his face, he pointed at books and scribbled unreadable notes, but he could not speak. Now you can laugh about it. Almost forty years have passed.

  Lady Day died when you were in that place. Her life came to an end before you’d ever heard her sing. She slipped away before you’d heard her name. It was years later that you were penetrated by her haggard voice with its plaintive cry. The Classical and the Gothic were your teachers then; it was to be some time before you discovered ‘What A Little Moonlight Can Do’.

  And it was at Oxford that you met Arthur. The one place in the world that your mother thought you would be safe from miners was the one place where you met a man with coal dust in his eyes. Arthur. He had coal dust in his soul. Mother never knew. Until her dying day she thought he was the son of a country parson. She should have married him instead of you, she would have managed him better. She would have appreciated his aspirations. That was something you never did, Dora, because while he was climbing up the social scale you were intent on climbing down it. You were searching for the working classes while he was trying to forget them. What a funny couple you were. What a hilarious duo. How you mauled each other. How you marked each other.

  And yet it could have worked. You could have sacrificed yourself as other women did. Arthur wanted you to sacrifice yourself and you refused because you thought your own life had meaning, import. You were full of... history. The English Civil War was more important to you than a miner’s son with coal dust in his eyes. You judged his aspirations spurious and let him go. He would never understand why. He did not have the insight. He was a miner’s son. A philosopher, an economist, an idealist in his way. Arthur, the father of your children; a child himself who wanted that you be his wife first and last. Arthur, who reminded you of your vows. Arthur who, in truth, did not want much, but who sought it from you who could not give.

  And if his aspirations were spurious, Dora, what about your own? Did you really think it possible that they would give you a Chair? You? A woman? A married woman? A divorced woman? A woman with children? And the working classes; did you think they would listen to you? Yes, you thought all that, and more. You thought you had the answers. You thought your generation would change the world, but in the end you fell back on gin, long black cigarettes, all-night parties, and, and... you are not at all like your mother.

  But then, Dora, then? Can you salvage anything from memory? You. were married on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Jack Kennedy. It was winter, snow on the ground. You were a virgin. A lecturer at the University of Leeds, stubbornly pushing your department into accepting more female students. Even then seventy-five per cent of entrants were men. Arthur was climbing the ladder in the Scientific Civil Service. There had been a hard frost overnight, and the bushes and trees were decked with crystals. It was the happiest day of your life.

  Remember? It is your day. A long white underskirt in silk. The dress fastens high up the neck with those tiny buttons. Lace. Oh, dear God, Dora, remember all that lace? Mother is crying into huge, starched handkerchiefs all morning. Half an hour before the car arrives she blurts out her guilt: ‘I should have broken your hymen. Dora, darling, forgive me.’ She is inconsolable. Her own mother had done it for her when she was three months old. It saved so much pain. She had worried about it, on and off, for years. ‘It didn’t seem so important at the time, but now...’ She searches for a
nother starched handkerchief and blows. She is a whale on the morning of your wedding to Arthur. A spouting whale. The ditches in her face powder run with tears.

  Poor Dora. You do not know what a hymen is. You have pursued history to the exclusion of everything else. You do not think about this hymen. If it was important you would know what it was. Nevertheless, it stands there all day, in one of the tributaries of your mind, this unbroken hymen that makes your mother cry.

  You do not worry about sex. You are a virgin, but you have read Emile Zola. And Arthur is experienced. He has been with prostitutes; twice. What could possibly go wrong? It would be different if Arthur was green. But he is... well, another colour.

  White, actually. His body is powder-white. You realize in the bedroom when his shirt comes off that you have never seen his body before. It is flesh-white; divided vertically in front by a line of black hairs that originate way below the belt and fail hopelessly to blossom on his chest. His back is divided too, but horizontally. The shoulders are matted black, with the same long hairs, but below the shoulder blades the white skin is barren. You avert your eyes when he lowers his trousers, and only look back again when he is completed by pyjamas. Your silk nightgown is pale blue. You feel naked in it.

  Neither of you speak. There is an atmosphere in the room. You have created that atmosphere. It has grown out of your subconscious. Something wonderful is going to happen. You are trembling. Arthur is climbing on top of you in the bed. Why does he not kiss you, Dora? Why? He is tugging at the stuff of your nightgown, pulling it, stretching it, grunting and tugging, kneeling above you, forcing his knees between your thighs.

  When he has spent himself he rolls away and weeps. It was the first time for him. It was a lie about the prostitutes. You comfort him, tucking your body into the curves of his, wrapping your arms around his flesh-whiteness. You wipe his tears away with the palm of your hand, blow into his ear, cover his neck and face with kisses. He groans softly, like a big bear, and falls asleep. The surface of your body is prickling, you can feel the blood gushing through your breasts and thighs, you spread yourself in the bed and bury the memories of the day in your feelings. Arthur begins to snore.

  3

  William had forgotten everything. He was standing in Parliament Street watching the screen of a mute television through a shop window. There was a smear of perspiration along his top lip and his heart was beating rapidly. Off to his right a brass band was playing Sousa’s ‘Hands Across The Sea’. It felt like they had been playing it for ever. To his left a couple of girls were involved in a game of chess on the municipal ‘board’, which was marked out by coloured paving stones. One of the girls was lugging a black plastic bishop along the length of the diagonal. Her friend seemed to be composed entirely of breasts. William felt a surging hatred inside him that threatened to obliterate the second girl from the face of the earth. This was not a new experience for him, he had felt the same way before.

  William recognized the street, but he didn’t know why he was there. He looked at the clock above Marks and Spencer’s. Eleven o’clock. Morning. He must be here for a reason. This had happened twice lately. It was as if he was sleep-walking. He’d wake up, and have no idea how he’d got to wherever it was, or what he was doing there. If he stood perfectly still and waited it would come back to him.

  Worrying.

  Worrying when a part of a person wasn’t functioning properly.

  He inspected his clothes, tried to remember putting them on in his room that morning. Clean clothes, neat. Jacket, grey; with a white shirt, maroon tie. His black slip-on shoes had been polished to a high shine. The creases in his trousers were straight and sharp. He’d pressed them before he came out. He remembered that.

  It was all right to stand here and pretend to watch the television. If people passed by they wouldn’t look at him. They wouldn’t know that he wasn’t functioning properly. They’d think he was watching television.

  No one would dream that he had had blood on his hands.

  William smiled. He could fool people. When he was functioning properly he could fool people easily; but when he wasn’t functioning properly he could still do it. He had a genetic propensity.

  Some memory remained. He knew who he was. Knew he was directed.

  A bead of sweat dripped off his eyelid and sprayed salt into his eye. He wiped the eye and looked around. The people passing by went about their business. No one looked twice at William.

  The picture on the television changed, credits moved up the screen, and a series of adverts began. You could order a CD or a cassette of the world’s favourite love songs. They were only available from one address in London. Next there was a new scouring pad that moved by magic, wiped up the kitchen and the oven by itself, made everything clean and bright.

  Bright.

  Light.

  That was it, that was what William was supposed to be doing in the town. Bright. Light. He was here to buy candles.

  The band stopped playing, and the players brought out satchels and bags and flasks of coffee. That’s what happened if a person waited. You got a break. The world which seemed as though it had no purpose suddenly took on meaning.

  William turned away from the shop window. He walked past the girls playing chess, the one with breasts still disturbing him, flashing images of violence through his consciousness. He controlled himself and made his way along Daveygate to the wax shop.

  He found the candles. Ten centimetres long, cream-coloured. He took one of them to the counter, where the young female assistant was smiling at him. He didn’t return the smile. ‘I want three hundred of these,’ he said.

  The girl’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t know if we have that many,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to ask the manageress.’

  ‘They keep them in the back,’ William told her. ‘In boxes of fifty.’

  The girl disappeared into the stock room, and a couple of minutes later she returned with four boxes of candles. The manageress followed with another two boxes.

  ‘You were right,’ the salesgirl said.

  William didn’t need a woman to tell him he was right.

  One day he had followed the maternal-looking manageress. She had collected a toddler from a childminder before going to a flat in Fishergate, where she lived with a man. The man went out drinking in the evening, stayed out late. And while he was out the manageress was alone, unprotected.

  He paid for the candles in cash and when the girl had packed the boxes into strong plastic bags, he carried them back to his flat. He lived alone now. With the ghost of his father.

  Bright. Light. It was a miracle how he had been reminded of his purpose. Like a voice. As if someone had spoken to him.

  4

  Geordie was first into the office that morning. He put the water on to boil and spooned ground coffee into a blue jug which Celia had bought to replace the one he’d broken the previous week. Celia was visiting Dora, staying with her while Sam came into the office. But Marie would be in as well, so that meant three of them. He put five measures of the coffee into the jug. No point drinking it if you couldn’t taste it. That was Sam. That’s what Sam would say.

  He looked through the audio tapes while he waited for the kettle, and dug out The Very Best Of The Mamas And The Papas. He stuck it in the machine and pushed the PLAY button. ‘California Dreaming’. That’d do. Sam liked his music to have matured.

  What Sam had said on the phone last night was that there was a new job. But what he’d also said was that he wanted Geordie and Marie to handle it between them. He’d want reports, but essentially they were gonna do it on their own. Make the decisions, everything. What did Geordie think about that?

  ‘Oh, sure, why not? We’ve been involved in enough cases by now. We know what to do. It’ll be a piece of bread.’

  ‘Cake,’ Sam told him.

  ‘Piece of cake?’

  ‘Yeah, like falling off a twig.’

  But then after Sam rang off and Geordie got to thinking about it,
he wasn’t so sure. He’d talked to Janet about it, and Janet thought he shouldn’t worry. Just do it.

  ‘But what if we make a mess of it? How long’s it gonna be before we get another chance? And we could lose business - I mean if people hear how we screwed up this job, we might never get any other jobs.’

  ‘Geordie,’ Janet had said with her patient voice. ‘There are never any guarantees that things are going to turn out right. You just do the best you can. That’s what we all do. The best we can. And if that turns out not to be good enough, then that’s how it is. We learn by our mistakes. But if you make a mistake it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a disaster.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure,’ he said. ‘And it’ll be good experience. When Sam dies, eventually. I don’t mean he’s gonna die soon, or anything like that. He could live for years yet. Could live to be over a hundred. But when he dies or retires, I might have to take over the business, me and Marie together. Then I’ll remember this time, when Sam gave us this chance.’

  But he didn’t sleep all night. Lying next to Janet, breathing in the scent of her, feeling the closeness and warmth of her body, watching the fluorescent numbers on the digital clock by the side of the bed. At half-past three Janet got up and said she’d make him a cup of cocoa.

  ‘I thought you was asleep,’ Geordie told her.

  ‘How can I sleep when you’re just lying there not moving and not breathing right?’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Geordie, pulling on a dressing gown, and following her down to the kitchen. ‘I thought I was breathing perfect.’

  The Mamas and the Papas moved on to ‘Dedicated To The One I Love’, and the kettle boiled and switched itself off. At the same time Marie arrived, and Geordie told her that it was synchronicity.

  ‘Don’t think so, darlin’,’ she said, hanging her coat and scarf on the stand. ‘Synchronicity only happens to Jungians.’ Marie had lost weight over the last year. You would still regard her as big, but it was more to do with the size of her bones than the amount of fat she carried. Geordie couldn’t work out if she looked better for it. She did look better for it but she looked better because she felt good about herself for losing the weight. She didn’t really look better because she was slimmer. Geordie had liked her when she was rounder and softer, but he didn’t say so. It might be sexist.